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BYD’s Electric Bus Plying Hong Kong Streets

The latest bus to hit Hong Kong’s streets is a Chinese-branded vehicle that’s full of foreign parts.

Efforts by China’s BYD to showcase its vehicles abroad got a boost this week when one of its electric buses started carrying paying commuters along the congested streets of Hong Kong. Dominant public bus operator Kowloon Motor Bus launched the BYD eBus on a year-long trial to test the technology’s suitability in the city’s hot climate and hilly terrain.

The single-decker bus can carry 66 passengers at a range of up to 180 kilometers on a full, three-hour charge, traveling at speeds of up to 70 kilometers per hour, according to the bus company, which has put the vehicle on a rather undemanding seven-kilometer route within urban Kowloon.

For several years, Warren Buffett-backed BYD has struggled to get international recognition for its green-vehicle technology, partly a result of development delays and a lack of favorable publicity, especially after one of its electric taxicabs crashed at high speed and caught fire in Shenzhen last year, resulting in three deaths.

It’s still unclear whether the fire was linked to the car’s battery design, but the reliability of BYD’s products was again tested in June when one of its charging units in Hong Kong overheated and emitted smoke, weeks after the company rolled out electric taxis in the city.

KMB, the bus operator, is seeking to ease concerns among Hong Kong’s public by stressing the stringent safety requirements that it laid out to BYD when it ordered a bus that was “specifically tailor-made for Hong Kong operations,” said KMB Deputy Managing Director Evan Auyang. He notes KMB requires each of its new buses to be built to serve up to 18 years with the company.

The result of such specific requirements is a Chinese-branded bus that’s full of foreign parts: seats, a steering system and front-axle from Germany, an air-conditioning system from Japan, doors from the Netherlands, seat covers from Britain, and paintwork done using U.S. products, according to KMB.

Meanwhile, the bus frame and batteries, of course, are developed in China. But just to be doubly safe, strong fire-resistant steel plates were added around the three lithium-ion batteries at the behest of KMB.

KMB has even put the eBus through seven months of road tests before setting up trial runs as a staff shuttle, carrying a total of 20,000 employees earlier this year. BYD declined to comment on the deployment of the company’s electric bus in Hong Kong.

The success of its electric bus program is critical for BYD as it aims to play a bigger role on the transit front, betting that the wider adoption of its electric vehicles for public transport will significantly boost sales. The company has electric buses on trial routes in California, and in April it opened an electric bus assembly facility in the U.S. state. It also sealed a deal earlier this year to sell 10 buses to Long Beach Transit, an agency serving a cluster of communities south of Los Angeles, in a deal worth US$12.1 million.

BYD is betting that many cities will open up to green buses as the global population becomes more environmentally conscious, even if the investment costs are high. Hong Kong’s government recently set side HK$180 million (US$23.2 million) to subsidize the city’s bus operators to buy 36 electric buses.

The BYD bus operating at KMB is on loan to the company, which said it aims to complete a tendering process this year to put electric buses in service by the second half of 2014.

Elsewhere in Asia, the South Korean city of Gumi recently began experimenting with two electric buses developed in the country that could be wirelessly charged while the vehicles are moving.